Book Excerpts

Lust isn’t always sexual. In comes in many forms and flavors. In A Margin of Lust, what does Gwen lust for? Art? The real estate killer?

Have you made the connection between the names of the primary characters in the book and a certain legend?

Any idea why Greta Boris chose those names? (Hint: the answer is in the first circle of hell in Dante’s Inferno. The answer to this and the above question are also on the bottom of the page in case you don’t have your copy of The Divine Comedy handy.)

Gwen and Art’s marriage problems are pretty typical in today’s busy world. Have you or anyone you known dealt with the same issues? How did you, or they, handle it?

Gwen has a deep-seated phobia about close, dark places that stems from her childhood. Do you or someone you know have phobias that haunt you? What are the roots of those fears?

Lance makes an argument for adultery on page 212. (It’s a few pages into Chapter 33 for e-book readers.) What do you think of his logic?

Is adultery ever a good idea?

Two of the characters in the book were affected by their parents’ behavior. Which two? What was the impact on their later life?

Answers to 2 and 3: Gwen, Art and Lance represent the characters in the legend of King Arthur. Dante meets Guinevere and Lancelot in the first circle of hell where they are being punished for their sin. They are thrown about by an eternal storm that represents the passion that controlled them in life. The storm that begins in chapter thirty-seven of A Margin of Lust is inspired by this passage in the Inferno.

The Medieval anchoress would often be laid on a funeral bier and given last rites before being carried to her anchorhold, the small cell in which she’d be entombed for the rest of her days. The ceremony represented her commitment to die to the world and live for Christ. Some anchorholds contained the anchoress’s open grave as a memento mori, or reminder of death. No longer a participant in the affairs of men, she became an observer, viewing the world through a small window in her cell wall. The symbolic death of self–one’s desires, biases and agendas–is the only path to true objectivity.

From draft one of She Watches – An Anchoress Perspective

by Abby Travers

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Tuesday, March 13th: 11:45 PM

The snap of branches, a wet thud, and a strangled wheeze woke Abby. The sounds weren’t loud, but she’d only been in a half-sleep. She slipped out of her bedroll, crossed the dirt floor to the squint her father had made for her and peered out. [Read more…] about Excerpt from The Sanctity of Sloth